


Thoughts of Virginia

by XanderP764



Category: 19th Century CE RPF
Genre: 19th Century, Civil War, I'm Bad At Tagging, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23327167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XanderP764/pseuds/XanderP764
Summary: Private James Cooper fights in the famous Pickett's charge in the Battle of Gettysburg. The grisly battle will haunt him for the rest of his life.I'm bad at descriptions, sorry.





	Thoughts of Virginia

“Fix Bayonets!”

“Not yet you fool!” A captain bellowed, batting the blade out of the embarrassed sergeant’s trembling hands. “At ease, boys, no point in fussing over ourselves yet.”

James let the bayonet slide back into the sheath at his hip, cringing at the rasp produced.

“We ‘lowed to sit down again, cap?” A rifleman asked.

“No, no. Stay put.” The captain half glanced at Major General Pickett on his horse, before striding off to some poor private. “Johnson get off of your sorry ass!”

“But sir!”

“You’ll have plenty of time to waste the Lord’s good time when you join him, until then stand upright like a soldier, or I’ll send you at the goddamn Yankees alone!”

James felt amusement flicker within him, before he sobered at the reminder that soon enough, they’d all be marching across that field. His hands tugged at the belt around his waist, desperate for any form of distraction. He reassured himself for what must have been the eighth time, that the cartridges and percussion caps hadn’t magically disappeared from their pouches.

“Battle jitters, soldier?” The voice came from behind him, to which Jamie turned around to find a man on a horse. Upon recognizing the gold stars on his collar and bars at his breast, he hastily saluted Major General Pickett.

“Sir!”

“Not too long now, private…?” The general trailed off.

“Private Cooper, sir.”

The bearded man dismounted, careful not to get his sabre tangled. He grasped his shoulder and smiled grimly.

“Your Christian name?”

“James, sir.”

“Well James,” Pickett pulled out a cigar, but did not light it, twirling it between his fingers. His hands did not shake, surprisingly, meaning he was sober. “I have it on good authority that all we need is one big push, and then?”

“We win, sir?”

“Damn right.” The general gazed past the treeline and swore softly, before speaking to himself. “Three quarters of a mile. Damn you, Lee.”

“Sir?”

“You have a woman, James? A wife? A sweetheart?”

James shifted uncomfortably, “Yes sir, her name’s Sally.”

“Ha!” The general guffawed, “what are the chances, I also have a sweetheart called Sally. She ain’t from North Carolina, is she?”

“No sir, Louisiana.”

“Thought for a second we‘d both been played, but seems we just lucky men.” The general smiled good-naturedly, battle jitters or not, James found himself smiling too. “You from Louisiana y’self?”

“Virginia, born and bred, sir.”

“When we march out there, think’a Sally, think of Virginia,” Pickett stopped twirling the neatly rolled cigar and tucked it in James’ breast pocket, “think of the South when you drive a bowie knife through the belly of a Yankee. This is our country, son, ain’t there’s.”

“I will sir, thank you sir.”

“Save the cigar for after the battle, ain’t nothing like a hard-earned smoke after a battle,” the general smiled before pivoting, “Lieutenant Coffman!”

One of his aides came scrambling forward. “Sir!”

“Have the captains do their jobs and bring me my god forsaken horse.”

It wasn’t long after Pickett had spurred his horse away that the captain returned. Despite the fact he had a three-quarter mile march, a field of artillery and an army of Yankees ahead of him, Jamie had a newfound confidence within him.

“Soldiers!” the huge captain bellowed, “present arms!”

James walked towards where his company was forming and rested the gun in the crook of his arm.

“Load!”

Tearing the paper pouch of gunpowder with his teeth, he poured the black substance down the barrel of gun. A terrible booming explosion echoed across the fields as the cannons began to fire, one after the other in a stuttering bombardment alike to thunder. He could no longer hear the captain’s orders despite the proximity, however James continued to load his gun. With the bullet rammed to the back of the gun and the percussion cap in place, he shouldered the gun in time with the men next to him.

“Now you can fix bayonets!” The big captain ordered. A nervous gasp of laughter arose from the men.

Bayonets in place, they marched. Out from underneath the shade of the trees, and into the open fields. The treeline seemed to come alive as ranks of men clad in grey marched forward, beneath banners that hung limp in the still air.

They marched, in silence, to their chagrin. The captain forbade chatter. They marched, listening to the distant tune of ‘Dixie’, which would be overwhelmed by the deep rumbling of both Northern and Southern cannons.

After marching for long enough for James to worry for the integrity of his boots, a company besides them exploded in a cloud of thick dirt and screaming blood. They stumbled into a panicked jog.

It was as if a switch had been flipped. The sky cracked in two, the earth shook. A piece of shrapnel cleaved straight through a man’s neck and hit the groin of another, leaving both crumpled on the floor in a warm puddle of black blood. A canister shot from a cannon tore through an entire company of men, felling a dozen men like corn. Men tripped over the dead, men stopped seemingly for no reason, until blood began to cascade from their jugular. James saw a shell land directly on man, watched as he evaporated into a warm mist of red, splinters of bone catapulting upwards.

“Keep on going boys!” The captain roared. Half the men scrambled forward at a faster rate in response, following the huge man forward into a charge. They levelled their bayonets at the enemy and ran,

What went through James’ head was not thoughts of the South, of State’s rights, of Virginia, or even thoughts of his dear Sally, only an overwhelming expanding fear, deep within his throat. Tears were in his eyes, his lips were salty, his arms shook, and the gun rattled.

A canister shot ripped through his company. The men around him obliterated into daggers of bone splinters, steaming hunks of flesh and black, dark, thick blood. Red was all he comprehended for a moment in time. James saw the big captain be slice sliced in twain by a larger piece of shrapnel. The noise, the smell, the seeing of… _that_ , the taste of blood on his tongue, James fainted.

The soil in Pennsylvania was a coarse, brown sort. Different from the red fertile soils his childhood state of Virginia consisted of. The crater was made of both. Red and brown.

It wasn’t really a crater, more of a shell hole. The redness wasn’t the soil either. For a brief moment, he forgot who, where or what he was.

A crack of thunder – cannons – yanked him from his reverie. A boy in a blue uniform slid into the crater, likely expecting to find it empty. It was not.

James scrambled for his gun. In a cascade of dirt and innards he dived forward and grasped it, fumbled it to his shoulder, and pointed it at the Northerner. The rifle slammed back, bruising his shoulder. From behind the cloud of gun smoke, the boy leaped towards him.

They grappled. Grunting, bleeding, bruising. His left hand was trapped beneath his weight. The gun was gone. A blow to the face left James starstruck, before he returned the gesture and kneed him. The blue man bit down on his neck hard. James jerked and threw him backwards with a blood-curdling scream. The bowie knife rasped from its sheath and found itself in the belly of some poor Boston kid, dressed up in blue.

Jamie’s heartbeat stormed through his ears, pulsing. He breathed in scoopfuls of air, his heart pumping at a staccato rhythm. His thoughts had not been of the South when that knife found itself in his hands.

The boy’s head was tilted skyward, as if calling to God. He did not move. James crept forward, splaying a hand over the wound in the boy’s belly, fingers sliding in the blood.

A photo in the pocket of the now purple dressed soldier had a pretty girl in it, with a name and address scribbled on the back. Boston, Massachusetts.

“I’ll write to her.” James croaked to the corpse.

The cigar was still in his pocket, next to his rapidly beating heart. Neatly wrapped. He smoked the whole thing before someone found him. A Texan with a sympathetic smile. He climbed out of the crater to find himself back in the battle. There was a war to fight.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this on a whim one afternoon, so I'm sorry if it's crappy. This is how I spend my Quarantine.
> 
> Either way, thank you for reading it! Forgive me for not really researching enough ^^


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